Anti-bacterial hand gel has become a bit of a fact of life now. I remember when Swine flu was in the news every day and industrial-sized containers of the stuff appeared in our work toilets accompanied by strongly worded notices reminding us that our hands were germy playgrounds.
It’s definitely the case that the odd squirt of the stuff can help to keep some of the winter bugs at bay and if you’re venturing into a hospital it really should be enshrined in law that you de-bug your hands before you start touching everything in sight.
But what do you do if your hands are already a bit dry, chapped or sore? Many conventional hand gels are mostly alcohol, which makes them uber-drying (as well as eye-searingly pungent). I find that my winter hands just can’t cope with lots of washing with detergents or regular dowsing in alcohol. Which is a particular problem for my massage practice as it’s more important than ever that my hands are clean when I’m working.
Then I discovered Quash via Twitter and it has solved all my problems. It’s a hand sanitiser but it’s also alcohol-free and 100% ‘natural’. Natural is a tricky word as there’s no common definition, but there’s not much on the ingredients list that I don’t recognise. Like anything, don’t overuse it. Any ingredient, even a natural one like an essential oil, can become an irritant or sensitiser if your skin is over-exposed. But if you want to de-bug your hands without leaching all the moisture out of them, then Quash is most definitely your answer.
It’s a spray solution, not a gel and the bottle indicates that two ‘squirts’ will be enough each time. My 50ml bottle contains 250 ‘squirts’ so if you used it twice a day, you should have enough for about two months. At £3.56 that’s pricer than many hand sanitisers but pretty reasonable. You can also buy 15ml handbag-sized bottles for £2.03, or you can save a bit by buying bundles on the Quash website.
It doesn’t smell amAZing but equally it doesn’t smell strongly at all and is certainly a lot less noticeable than that solventy smell you get from the alcohol-based gels.
All-in-all, a new handbag must-have.
Quash: from £2.03, available at Waitrose, Sainsburys, Planet Organic, Whole foods and the Quash website.
Ingredients: Aqua, Manuka honey +20, Aloe vera, Zinc PCA, White willow bark extract, Radish root filtrate, Stay C50 (liquid vitamin C), White tea solubiliser, Lavender essential oil, Lime essential oil
